If you are like most people, you are not able to maintain your meditation practice on a daily basis. Why is that? For the most part, motivation or lack of it has a lot to do with it. I am sure you think there is just not enough time in the day. But with motivation, time would never be an issue. So let’s talk about motivation in detail today.
It is one thing to discuss the motivation for meditation but motivation is necessary for everything you want to do in life. How do you develop motivation? I read something interesting the other day and it really caught my eyes. When you set out to do something whatever that may be, have you noticed at times you are all ready to go and jump right into it until the task is complete? Other times, those things just stay on your task list and you keep postponing the task as long as you possibly can. Why is that? The root cause for this is a lack of motivation.
Next time you are set out to tackle a big item, do me a favor, make a list of 25 reasons why you want to do something. You may say, why 25 reasons? Why can’t I just have one reason? You can, but in my experience, the first few reasons tend to be superficial. They are usually, what you are telling yourself or what you want people to believe. Once you start writing this down on a piece of paper, by the time you come to reasons 15, 20, and 23, the real reason comes out. Your hopes and dreams, your enthusiasm will display themselves. Once these reasons show themselves, motivation naturally comes. There is no more reason to procrastinate because now you know exactly what it is that you doing this for. So when do you get motivated? This is another interesting part. Usually, you will notice that motivation comes once you begin a process. If you look at where a task tends to have difficulty, it is usually, in the beginning, having difficulty getting off the ground and then towards the end getting it to a finish line. In between, momentum usually carries the day. So when the task begins, we need motivation and that is when the list of reasons comes in very handy. Once a task gets going and reaches the finish line, a lot of people wrap up before they get it to where they really wanted it to see. They call it good enough. This is another place you need motivation. At this time, going back to those really deep reasons—reasons 18, 22, 24 come in really handy. Once we get the boost of the motivation getting it to the best possible end is just a matter of time and process.
So now that we know how we can tackle obstacles, let’s use this to overcome our lack of daily meditation practice. If you would make a list of why you want to meditate. Again, at least have 25 reasons to meditate. Once you have developed that list, you will notice that I don’t have time or that life gets in the way or I need to take care of my family and all other superficial excuses will just melt away. In my experience, there is such not having the time it is just a lack of importance we put on whatever that we are not doing. If it is important enough, you will make time. We all have the same amount of time no one has 25 hours in a day. Let’s make sure we put importance on our own peace of mind over the business of life. This is similar to the four-quadrant we discussed a few episodes ago about urgent vs important. Let’s not get the urgency of life get in the way of the importance of keeping a peaceful mind. A peaceful mind will help us carry throughout the day. Hopefully, you will get motivated to develop motivation for your meditation practice!